


The Women

by nostalgia



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Abortion, Femslash, Multi, Old Age, Short, The Year That Never Was (Doctor Who)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-03
Updated: 2019-02-03
Packaged: 2019-10-21 10:40:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 400
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17641217
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nostalgia/pseuds/nostalgia
Summary: Martha helps Lucy after the Year That Never Was.





	The Women

"I thought that year hadn't really happened."

"We were in the epicentre of the time storm," says Martha, full of UNIT jargon and pretended confidence on the matter. "It happened for us, just not for anyone else."

Lucy sighs and looks away, out the window. "He did win, then. He always told me he'd win no matter what."

Martha's there to see that he doesn't.

\---

Lucy is on the border of sanity and Martha isn't sure the woman completely understands what's happening, what she is being asked to decide. 

"We won't tell the Doctor," says Lucy, momentarily wise. 

Martha nods, lets herself assume that the other woman knows her thoughts. The Doctor might not appreciate Lucy as the mother of the species, but for all his talk of the 'bigger picture' he might not understand the women being women. Martha does not believe in original sin, but she finds that she doesn't want to take the chance. So she doesn't call the Doctor, doesn't call anyone. She can save the world on her own, if need be.

\---

Time is running out, but they move to Lucy's family cottage in the Lake District and set up a sort of home. Martha imagines herself a lesbian mother and shakes off the thought that it might be nice. She only wants to kiss Lucy because no one else remembers, because Lucy knows who she really is. 

And Martha begins to know Lucy, to piece together what she must have been like before the mirror shattered and sliced her into a million tiny fragments. The woman on the _Valiant_ was a warning, the fate of a woman too bound by the spell of a Time Lord. Martha left before she fell, almost relieved that the Doctor wouldn't love her the way she wanted him to. 

Maybe Lucy's _why_ he wouldn't.

\---

It is her first abortion, and her concern for her patient is overlaid by the worry of _what if it won't die?_ Martha never learned enough about Time Lords, but she thinks there are some deaths that must be final, even for them. 

"I don't feel guilty," says Lucy, afterwards. "Should I feel guilty?"

Martha kisses her then, because she doesn't feel guilty either. What Martha feels is relief, and a strange sense of having kept the universe in balance. 

"It's always the women," she says, "they always make us do the difficult things."


End file.
